Open your survey notes from earlier in this project. Name one living thing you found and one thing it seemed to need or eat. Today we join those finds into food chains and a web.

That line of who-eats-whom is how energy from the sun travels across our school hedge.

Grass is eaten by a caterpillar, the caterpillar by a spider, the spider by a robin. That line is a food chain.

A plant that makes its own food from sunlight is called a producer. Every chain starts there. When we draw a food chain, the arrow goes from the food to the eater: it shows the energy moving (the energy began as sunlight trapped by the plant).

Look at the cards on the front desk. They make a food chain: grass, caterpillar, spider, robin. Read it from left to right, and read each arrow as eaten by.

• Grass comes first because a plant makes its own food from sunlight. A plant that does that is called a producer.
• Where does the energy start?
• Which way does each arrow point?

Now watch a second plant join in: daisy. A caterpillar eats daisies as well as grass, so the daisy's arrow points to the same caterpillar card. When two chains share a living thing, they join up. You will build a joined picture like this next, from your own survey.

Help put the cards in order on the board by calling out which card has to come first and which way each arrow should point. This is a quick check rather than a full rebuild, so keep the two rules in mind as you go: the plant starts the chain, and every arrow points to the eater. Then name one other plant from the school grounds that could start a different chain.